[UPHPU] Source Control Questions

[Bryan Petty]

On 12/27/06, jtaber <jtaber at johntaber.net> wrote:
> If you are on linux, try Bazaar - it's a distributed VCS that I think
> does what you want (btw it's what Ubuntu uses).

I've never used Bazaar, but I was under the impression that it was
mostly geared for open source GPL'd software. I don't think Dan really
needs a distributed VCS. Bazaar is still fairly new, and I can't
really find any decent GUI clients for it.

Subversion can handle every last item on his list of demands, so if
your developers are already familiar with SVN, and you mostly work on
Windows, I'd highly recommend going that route as it will be
quicker/easier to integrate with the added bonus of TortoiseSVN which
saves me a ridiculous amount of development time compared with every
other SCM client I've ever touched.

On the subject of diff viewers, I've played with many flavors on
Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Read on for a very brief review:

* WinMerge (Windows): Again, Windows takes the cut for best tools in
this field as I'm a huge fan of of this free, open source tool,
unfortunately, it's Windows-only.
* Meld (Linux, GTK): I hated this one when I first played with it a
year or two ago, but in the last month of using it, I've been really
impressed. It now contains built in support for browsing CVS, SVN, and
Bazaar directories and doing diffs with a simple double-click. I still
wish it had support for non-collapsed side-by-side diffs like WinMerge
though, but it will still remain my favorite linux diff viewer.
* TortoiseMerge (Windows): This comes installed with TortoiseSVN and
is really nice for doing code merges between SVN branches, but is
missing a lot of extra functionality I like to use in WinMerge for.
* Kdiff3 (Linux, Qt): Probably the best KDE-based comparison tool, but
can be very confusing at times, and has some serious performance
issues.
* Kompare (Linux, Qt): This is an extremely simple, stripped down
comparison tool based off of Kdiff2, do not use this if you plan to
actually make source changes, or like syntax highlighting.
* FileMerge (Mac): This is a free tool provided by Apple in the
Developer Tools package that provides extremely basic comparison and
merge functionality without the ability to edit base files in-place.
* P4Merge (cross-platform, Qt): This is available from Perforce for
free on all platforms, though I've not actually played with it, so I
can't say much about it.
* Araxis Merge (Windows): While I hear good things about this one,
it's missing features that WinMerge has, and costs $129 per seat for
the cheapest version.
* BBEdit / TextWrangler (Mac): Basically provides a third window
outlining differences in two files open in regular text editor
windows. Clicking on differences will scroll to them in those windows,
but there's no color highlighting aside from the syntax highlighting,
so it's not easy to identify where differences are or what was
changed.

Regards,
Bryan Petty